


i thought of angels

by mitzvahmelting



Category: Bandom, Steel Train
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Angels, Hurt/Comfort, Jealousy, Kidnapping, M/M, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Religion, Stockholm Syndrome, Suicidal Thoughts, Swearing, Torture, Wingfic, intertextuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-01
Updated: 2017-12-01
Packaged: 2019-02-09 06:58:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12882549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mitzvahmelting/pseuds/mitzvahmelting
Summary: an angel!fic verse, in which Jack and Daniel and Nate have a very complicated and extreme relationship(you probably don't need to know bandom to read this)





	i thought of angels

**Author's Note:**

> Reposted from 100funfics.tumblr.com
> 
> So, this is an interesting story. There are a lot of interesting voices that come together to make this story possible. Anything in plain text is my writing of the actual story. Anything in bold is Amy’s correspondence with me, anything in italics is my correspondence with her (all unless otherwise stated.) Amy was an internet friend of mind in 2013. The most recent tumblr username I have for her is yothatskafkaesque, but that one doesn't work anymore, and I have no clue if she wants to be associated with this fic anymore anyway haha.
> 
> The characters in this story are based on Nate, Jack, and Daniel, but they are nothing like them. This story deals with extraordinary circumstances.

_“I thought of angels_

_Choking on their halos_

_Get them drunk on rose water_

_See how dirty I can get them_

_Pulling out their fragile teeth_

_And clip their tiny wings” fall out boy, just one yesterday_

…

On the last night of their first tour, after the final show, Nate climbs into the van into the seat behind the passenger seat where Jack is sitting. The city is dark and they - Nate, who is acting as an auxiliary member, and then Jack and Evan - are driving back to New York from Philadelphia and they’re all exhausted, winded. The van is big and the instruments are in the very back, Nate takes the second row and Jack and Evan are in front. The other three are in the other van with the clothes and other belongings.

About halfway through the drive (Evan’s driving), Jack looks back to check if Nate is sleeping or not, when he sees that, in the interval between entering the van and now, Nate has grown wings.

Or something.

Jack is speechless, for a moment, staring at Nate curled to the side in the back seat.  **It’s dark, except when the glow from passing headlights skims across Nate’s face, and Jack can see his eyelids flutter. He inhales deeply, then lets it out with a sleepy hum. He looks so peaceful - _angelic?_ \- even as he is dwarfed by**these enormous masses of feather and bone taking up the other five feet of the back seat. And, yeah, it’s pretty dark, and Jack can’t  _really_  know for sure what he’s seeing. But it’s definitely a pair of wings, like angel wings, and Jack is breathing a little bit quicker.

It all suddenly makes sense.

…

_I just wanna talk about Jack keeping Nate tied up against a wall, all spread out for days at a time, feeding him and cooing at him and slowly lulling him into a sense of security, manipulating him into becoming Jack’s pet and then, eventually… a gift, for Daniel. Jack wants to win Daniel back, impress him. And this…. /Nate/, animalistic and obedient and naked and angelic and beautiful and quiet…. this might be the thing._

**“win him back,” you say? from what?**

_Daniel rejected Jack after Jack admitted to having feelings for Nate. But Jack insisted that Daniel simply didn’t understand the /nature/ of those feelings (or, in this situation, the super-nature). And so Jack is going to attempt to win Daniel over by gifting him with Nate himself. It’s all very Biblical. Jack’s a bit messed up in the head, you see… but, in truth, they all are._

**but what IS the nature of those feelings? is there some sort of rare bond that humans and angels can share, or… is a human more likely to be taken in by an angel’s beauty without really comprehending them as beings? and are there potential troubles surrounding a human essentially domesticating a celestial being, or are angels more or less independent and expected to look after themselves?**

_Well, if we take off of Supernatural’s premises, angels are mandated to love and admire humans because humans are God’s greatest creation (even though both humans and angels tend to agree that angels tend to be more unerringly perfect.) And so whenever a human and an angel interact there’s always this weird tension. The human admires the angel’s beauty and intensity and knowledge of otherworldly things. Mostly the beauty thing, though. Angels are so delicate and humans can’t help themselves but be fascinated by delicate things. Meanwhile the angels, in the presence of humans, are reduced to a sort of middle-child frustration. They try so hard to be perfect, /perfect/, but God will always love the humans more and the angels resent them for that. Jack is much more in tune with all of these ancient dynamics than other humans, and that’s why he knows immediately what Nate is and why that means so much. And his… as you put it, /domestication/ of Nate started long before Nate was aware that Jack knew. Jack was manipulating Nate from the start, but it wasn’t until Jack demanded to see Nate’s wings - knew that the wings /existed/ and that he was /right/ - that Nate realized the extent of that manipulation… and by then, he was so dependent… by then it was too late._

**i imagine daniel resents nate at first if he was angry at jack for having feelings for him. that’s probably where the dark, torture-y, “just one yesterday” side comes in.**

_Jack… /had/ tortured Nate, in a way, but not violently. Nothing specifically meant to hurt him. He may have tied Nate up a little too tight and kept him there a little too long, but, beyond that, Jack only tried to force Nate to fall in love with him. And that worked. After awhile. Nate couldn’t help but love Jack, partly because of /heavy/ Stockholm syndrome and partly because love for Jack, and all humans, is built into Nate’s entire being._

_And so he becomes Jack’s dog. Essentially._

…

Daniel doesn’t like Nate.

And Nate usually doesn’t notice that, because he’s so intensely focused on Jack, attuned to Jack’s every movement and desire and request, every sound and breath and heartbeat. But sometimes Jack leaves Nate alone with Daniel (Nate is Daniel’s, after all, isn’t that right?), and Daniel hurts Nate.

It wasn’t anything big at first until he realized that Nate is immortal.

And so sometimes he asks Nate to “come”, and that’s as much a command as any, and Nate comes to Daniel and sits on the floor in front of him like he always does for Jack and Daniel dispassionately tells Nate to manifest his wings.

Sometimes Daniel watches television while absentmindedly cutting lines into Nate’s shoulder blades with the very sharp bread knife from the kitchen.

As if daring Nate to scream out and try to defend himself, knowing that Nate  _can’t_  do so, whether psychologically or morally. Jack had told Nate to always follow Daniel’s orders and Daniel had whispered, to sooth the trembling angel, “you like it.”

And Nate can’t contradict that. He has to sit still and let Daniel do what he is doing and he has to sit still and he has to sit tall and sit still and be good.

And Daniel cuts down from Nate’s shoulder to the connection with the wing, the bony structures protruding from Nate’s shoulders. And there’s sports on the television, and Nate shivers and starts to cry, and wants to get away but he has to sit still and be good, and so he cries very quietly and sits still.

And waits for Jack to come home.

As the blood starts dripping down Nate’s back between his folded wings, Daniel tells Nate to make sure the carpets stay clean, and so they do, because Nate is an angel and he can do these things and he has to be good.

And Daniel… as this happens, as he begins to see how good Nate is being… how hard he is trying… he starts to appreciate it. Not in the same way that Jack appreciates it, but in a… way. Something similar. Maybe.

So he cuts the connecting tissue between the wing and Nate’s right shoulder, wedges the knife about two inches into the wing before removing it and listening to Nate’s terrible whimpering but he doesn’t move he just sits there being good, and Daniel, eyes still trained on the sports on the television, starts to stroke Nate’s hair, tell him how good he is, petting him and getting him to relax, hurting and horrified, into the crook between Daniel’s legs where it’s warm.

…

“ _ **In a way, the torture victim’s own body is rendered his worst enemy. It is corporeal agony that compels the sufferer to mutate, his identity to fragment, his ideals and principles to crumble. The body becomes an accomplice of the tormentor, an uninterruptible channel of the communication of pain, a treasonous, poisoned territory.” - Dr. Sam Vaknin**_

…

Jack doesn’t know, because, on orders from Daniel, Nate doesn’t tell him. And he heals himself. And he tries not to even act suspicious.

And Daniel continues putting up this front that he doesn’t care for Nate, that he’s disgusted by Nate’s existence and that, though frustrated by Jack’s decisions, Jack is the only person that Daniel cares about. But none of that is necessarily true. Because he… is intrigued by Nate, and Nate’s existence, and…

And perhaps his relationship with Jack is suddenly a bit strained, because of their fundamental disagreement about what is the appropriate relationship for a human and an angel to have.

Both Daniel and Jack… they knew Nate before they knew he was an angel. They were in a  _band,_ if only for a short while. And so they know that Nate used to seem human, in appearance and demeanor and ability to interact with other people and be creative and have dreams and sing songs.

But that was a facade, a fact made obvious by how easy it was for Jack to tear it down.

…

Now, Nate isn’t even remotely human. Physically, any celestial illusion that Nate had put up to hide his true inherent beauty has been torn down, because  _then_  he was beautiful, but now he is  _beautiful_  in a perfect, unreal sense. And so that’s fascinating, and Daniel and Jack will never get tired of looking at him. And then there’s the way he interacts with them. He used to… seem genuinely human, if a little strange in his opinions and choices about little things like underclothing and his lack of knowledge about world geography (he’d been known to shrug exasperatedly “It’s just  _land_ , though, right? What do I care what it’s called or where the lines are? They’ll just change as soon as I learn them.”)

But now he doesn’t even try to “act normal”, he just… he’s very animalistic in that he’ll turn and stare alarmedly at the cause of any sudden noise, and he communicates more with inarticulate sounds - quiet low moans to indicate agreement or acceptance, quiet whines for discontent - than with words. And he holds himself differently, with his shoulders drawn in and his arms resting around his abdomen. He makes himself small. He doesn’t look them in the eyes.

And it’s actually… hard to distinguish between what’s just Nate’s natural state as an angel, and what’s a result of Jack’s demands of obedience. But then again, it doesn’t really make a difference either way.

Daniel likes Nate’s submission and Jack likes that Daniel is happy and that’s how it is.

Until Jack realizes what Daniel is doing when Jack’s not around. (Because Nate is good at following orders and covering Daniel’s tracks, repairing his own shirt, making the blood disappear, not saying anything to Jack, but… it’s the healing himself that’s the problem. Because it’s become harder, as Daniel takes things further and further and deeper and… and Daniel had Nate sit still [and be good] while he carved, carefully, the word “wrong” into Nate’s chest and… and Nate was good he was so… but he couldn’t heal all of it and Jack saw the scars, that night, and reprimanded Nate for not telling him and Nate apologized, curled up and hid his face in his knees, apologized further, was so emotional that his wings manifested of their own accord and fluttered feathers against the bedroom wall.)

…

_oh right okay_

_so jack realizes what daniel’s been doing when he’s not around_

_what daniel’s been doing to nate_

_and here we have a problem, see? because jack is in love with daniel but… but he feels like it’s his responsibility to take care of nate_

_his responsibility beyond the usual responsibilities to protect a friend or a lover_

_but_

_something more base than that_

_he feels like he made nate defenseless and so it’s his responsibility to make sure that he can supplement what used to be nate’s defenses_

_and so it’s a bit startling to come home to the apartment from running errands with Rachel to find…_

_this_

_to find nate seated very still on the couch facing a dark television_

_wearing only boxershorts, his wings tense but spread wide across and beyond the couch itself_

_alone._

…

Daniel isn’t here (he might be… he’s probably in the bedroom or something but he’s not here).

“Nate?” Jack asks, hesitantly, setting his shopping bags on the counter and toeing off his shoes. His voice is a little… Jack knows he sounds like he’s talking to a mental patient, with the careful way he’s speaking (but it’s not like he’s worried he’s going to offend Nate or anything…) he says, slowly “What are you doing?”

It takes Nate a very long time to speak, and, when he does speak, Jack can hardly hear him from where he’s standing in the kitchen. It might be that Nate is so hesitant to speak because it’s hard for him to remember how, because… he doesn’t speak all that much anymore. If he used to speak ten thousand words a day… which is pretty average for a normal human (it’s true, Jack’s checked)… now he only says a few sentences. And only when asked. If asked.

And now he’s been asked and he takes a moment and he finally says, very very quietly, “I’m sitting.”

He doesn’t turn around to look at Jack. He stares at the dark television screen.

“I can see that you’re sitting.” Jack says, (again with the careful voice…) “Why?”

“Daniel told me to stay.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

He sits and he stares at the television and this is too weird, and Jack walks into the sitting room and towards Nate, carefully stepping around the wing, and…

That’s when he sees them.

And… and this is going to happen many times. Same situation, same word, same everything, because there are some things that just… Jack can’t control this. Or… he thinks he can, but he will soon realize he can’t, that this is going to happen often and that he can’t prevent it.

He kneels down in front of Nate and really looks. And he sees the scars, the scars that weren’t there this morning. He sees the raised marks up and down Nate’s abdomen, and his shoulders and his arms and down to his wrists and his face and the sides of his neck

up his calves and thighs

everywhere.

Long, raised lines that… it seems, even as Jack watches, are disappearing. Which is a bit of a ridiculous assumption, but… it’s happened before. Jack’s seen Nate heal himself before and these marks must be fresh…. the word “wrong” carved across his collarbones and…

Nate doesn’t look at Jack. He’s staring emptily at the screen.

And Jack realizes, darkly, that what Nate is staring at is his own reflection. Jack stands up, blocks the makeshift mirror, forces Nate’s gaze to resettle. “Nate, did Daniel do this to you?”

Nate’s eyes drift for a moment before settling on Jack’s face - vaguely. Not really looking Jack in the eye.

He kind of nods.

“And then he told you to… stay?”

He kind of nods again.

“And then you healed yourself.”

Nate hesitates, and this time he really looks at Jack, and then away, to the side. He says in his quiet voice “There was a lot of blood.”

“So… it took longer?” Jack asks.

“Yes.”

“When, Nate?”

Nate pauses, shuts his eyes thoughtfully. He opens them again. “Three and a half hours.”

“All alone?”

“Mmmhmm.”

Jack melts, and it’s the first time in about four days of living as the three of them that Jack regrets involving Daniel in all of this.

And that regret isn’t going to last very long, really, because Daniel will explain everything to Jack that night (as much as something like this can be explained, which, in truth, it can’t, but the fact that Jack and Daniel are able to actually discuss it is evidence of something, probably.)

But right now he regrets exposing Nate to all of this. And it’s the letters in Nate’s skin that make Jack angry.

Not because of the word itself but because… and this is a bit silly, when he thinks about it later, but right now it’s very very important…

because they’re written in English.

That’s Daniel’s worst crime is that he wrote this word in English and Jack hates that because he wishes Daniel would have written it in Hebrew because to write it in English just seems… wrong.

(Not that Daniel would’ve known how to write it in Hebrew, really, but he could have looked it up, and… English is not the language of the angels and neither is Hebrew but maybe it’s closer and… English is an insult, it seems.)

Jack melts, he shakes his head and kneels down closer to Nate, kisses the top of Nate’s head and then rests forehead against forehead, strokes down Nate’s shoulders and over the marks and… the marks will be gone by the morning, but…

It’s also the first time Jack kisses Nate.

Ever.

And so that’s a little relevant, too.

…

And this is going to happen many times, but it’s the fourth time that is the absolute worst. Because the fourth time, Jack actually comes home and hears Nate’s screams (muted, as there’s probably a gag [mental or physical] involved here somewhere, but  _audible_ ), and Jack’s never going to forget that. He’s never going to forget running into Daniel’s bedroom and discovering the angel, wings manifested and spread out against the bedroom wall, with the blood still fresh and the tears still streaming and Daniel’s blade still marking out the last few little lines of the letter “g” and that’s terrible because…

He’ll never forget how he felt in that moment, and how he felt in that moment was  _ashamed._  Because he knew that it was his job to keep Nate safe, and now Nate is very not safe.

So Jack calls to Daniel and Daniel stops, puts the knife down and turns around and Jack looks at him. And Daniel leaves, eyebrows furrowed in more thought than anger, and Jack rushes to his angel, holds the shivering creature and comforts it as it begins to pass out, and he tells Nate that he was good. He doesn’t know what else to say.

…

It’s a very morally ambiguous situation.

Or rather, it’s not morally ambiguous at all. It’s evil.

Because essentially Daniel is torturing Nate for his own amusement, and Jack is manipulating Nate out of… something indescribable but probably not good.

It’s evil.

But then… it’s not the moral ambiguity that Jack has a problem with.

It’s just that…

He wants to understand Nate and he wants…

Daniel wants to be feared, and he wants submission. Daniel wants Nate to cry, and hurt, and he wants Nate to want that, however irrational it sounds. Daniel can’t… help that. He can’t put morals on that. He doesn’t want to.

Jack wants to be needed, and he wants devotion. He wants Daniel to be loyal and he wants Nate to be loyal. And most of all he wants Nate to come to him, to seek him out. He wants Nate to come to him with fears or needs or hurt and he wants to be the one that Nate can trust and he wants to be the caretaker.

He wants Nate to initiate all of this because when Nate doesn’t it doesn’t feel right.

It’s just… Jack wants to be needed.

But Nate is the question.

Nate doesn’t want any of this. Or at least he doesn’t think so. But he also doesn’t know what he wants at all anymore.

He doesn’t feel like he has a self

He doesn’t feel like a thinking being.

He feels like a feeling being, as if all of the logic of his… his before days… were taken from him and replaced with physical sensitivity and he is afraid of Jack and Daniel but… (and he comes to this epiphany on a Saturday night when he is alone at their home, in Jack’s bed curled up on his side, where Jack had tucked him in an hour before, and Daniel had told him to “stay. sleep.”) he comes to this epiphany here in this dark room in this city of humans, alone and quiet and cut off from communication with the angels and

alone in a mostly human body in an empty house with no one to take care of him or engage him.)

He realizes that most of all he just wants to feel loved.

…

  
  


Over the next few months, Jack and Daniel jokingly call each other “Israel” every once in awhile. And it doesn’t really have anything to do with personal relationships or anything, it’s just a… biblical reference… but whenever they say it, Nate is always tuned in, because there’s a part of him that thinks (as the boys smile and flit around the kitchen cooking dinner for themselves, laughing and touching and heating up vegetables and, in Jack’s case, wordlessly and unapologetically rubbing the cold cucumber juice into Nate’s hair)… that maybe that’s close to love, anyhow.

…

**it’s so hard to think right now. but like… last night i reblogged a picture of daniel performing, which he had captioned "i actually don’t hate myself in this one. probably ‘cause you can’t see my face.” and just… daniel /doesn’t like himself/. but he loves jack. he loves jack SO much, more than he could ever possibly show. he admires him for his talent and his resilience and his insight and he wonders every day how he got lucky enough to have jack in his life. and, secretly, he wonders how long it will be until jack realizes daniel’s not good enough. and then jack develops these feelings (whatever they are) for nate and… there it is. it finally happened. how could daniel ever compete with an angel? so he hurts nate. when jack is gone he grabs him by the hair and throws him on the ground, slaps him across the face and then, after making sure nate is looking him in the eye, again, and it makes an ugly cracking sound. then daniel grabs him by the throat and squeezes, feeling nate’s adam’s apple jump between his fingers. and it’s useless, because nate’s immortal. the fear in his eyes isn’t real. daniel could never accidentally go too far and kill him. and daniel runs his hands under nate’s shirt, knowing that he can’t scar the skin, can’t mark it permanently like he wants to. but he feels it pebble under his touch, and as he rolls his hips he feels nate’s reluctant hardness through his pants. and that’s where daniel’s vision starts to go a bit fuzzy. when he rears back and lays a dizzying blow to nate’s cheek again, nate doesn’t cry out. he’s being good. like he always is. and he’s so good, and daniel’s not good enough, and daniel’s hand is a fist now, beating across nate’s mouth and reddening it with blood, and daniel’s kissing and biting his swollen lips and grinding against nate in earnest, pinning him, nate’s fingers are knotted in the sheets, and daniel’s not sure if his own voice is working but if it were it would be screaming “/why/” over and over**

**And he’s not sure what that would mean**

**But he doesn’t want to be here**

**with a bloody angel climaxing unwillingly beneath him and his best friend in the entire world drifting further and further away**

_I’m trying to think of what Daniel could say or do to make Jack think less of Nate. But I can’t think of anything. Maybe at most he can convince Jack that Nate sometimes acts especially strange in order to manipulate Jack for attention. Maybe Daniel could try to convince Jack that Nate is only so… /Nate/… because he wants Jack to pay attention to him, and not necessarily because he’s so fucked up and incapable like Jack thinks._

_Which… would be a scary concept for Nate, who can’t deny what Daniel is saying because he /can’t disagree with Daniel/ he just /can’t/… and he has to sit there at the table at dinner (all clothed and with his wings disappeared, showered and with his hair combed straight like this is some kind of new normal) while Daniel passive-aggressively makes these allegations as if Nate isn’t even /here/, and Jack keeps looking between Nate and Daniel, chewing and mulling over what Daniel is saying but not indicating anything and really the extent of all of this is that Nate is sinking into his chair because he /knows/ what’s going to happen he /knows/ Jack’s going to be so angry, going to hurt Nate and when Daniel hurts Nate it is torture but when /Jack/ hurts Nate… when Jack tells Nate he’s done something wrong… Nate wants to die._

_Across the table, twirling spaghetti around his fork, Daniel winks at Nate._

**oh GOD what if jack gets angry at /daniel/ for trying to pit him against nate, and that’s… daniel can’t take that.**

**and there’s lots of crying and “what do you expect? what am i supposed to /do/? i can’t be like him” and jack being taken aback because daniel isn’t always forthcoming about his feelings but right now he’s sobbing uncontrollably into his hands and jack’s fingers are circling his wrists gently and he’s cooing, “no, you don’t have to, daniel, that’s not what this is, it’s not the same thing…”**

**and nate can’t do anything but sit there and see what he had a hand in creating.**

…

This all happens at a very inopportune time, in the sense that of  _course_ Daniel has a breakdown right before he has to go to work (for the first time in ages,  _work_ , actual 9-5 work at the studio by the harbor, an apprenticeship under the sound engineer because he and Jack both promised to each other a long time ago that they were going to start making  _money_  during the interim between tours in order to keep the apartment and feed all three inhabitants…). So it’s the night before his first day at this job a subway-ride away, and honestly, this is what probably triggered him- the fact that he’s going to be leaving Jack and Nate alone together for a decent amount of time and that they could get up to  _anything_  and that what if Jack decides once and for all that he prefers Nate and…

That’s the trigger and now he’s cried and Jack is a mess - but his focus is on Daniel. And so he all but completely ignores Nate for the rest of the night, taking Daniel to bed (Jack’s bed) and lying there with him for awhile, holding him and kissing him and rubbing close, explaining and showing him exactly how much Jack cares for him and how different that love is and how… and it’s not…

They kiss a lot, and they touch each other, and they fall asleep together under the sheets with their jeans and boxers discarded somewhere under the sheets at the foot of the bed.

And Nate, after carefully considering his options, cleans up the dishes with soap and water and returns them to their places in the cabinets. The dishwasher seems a bit intimidating and he’d rather do this the simple way.

Jack treats Daniel, that night, the way he’s wanted to be able to treat Daniel for about… six years. Suddenly this whole awkward friendship plus occasional handjobs… like, it’s still there. But it’s definitely not the same. And that’s not necessarily because of the heightened drama caused by the introduction of power plays and angels, but rather by Daniel allowing himself to be as emotionally vulnerable as Jack has  _always_  felt.

For the first time Jack gets to kiss Daniel as an expression of genuine love more than the mostly-just-sexual kisses they’d shared in the past and that means something and… in the morning, Jack makes him breakfast and wakes him up by kissing his hair and his shoulder and… though Daniel still feels this terrible sadness in his throat from the night before, he’s at least able to get himself out the door without feeling too shitty about himself. A lot of that stems from the fact that Nate is nowhere to be seen (at Jack’s request upon waking the angel up, he’s hiding in the hall closet for a little while.)

When he sends Daniel to work (with nothing but his wallet and phone in his back pockets - no briefcase or anything. It doesn’t feel like a real job. Daniel feels ridiculous for thinking he could do anything real beyond play music and hurt the people he loves.), Jack hugs him for a moment, holds him and presses fingers to Daniel’s neck and kisses into his lips, and whispers that everything will be okay and that everything will be here when he gets back and that it’s just a few hours and that Jack will talk to him on the phone every time he calls. And Daniel doesn’t say much except giggle fakely and say it’s fine and of course he’ll be fine, and then he leaves.

And Jack has a conundrum, now.

Because he knows that Nate is probably frightened and confused by this whole situation, but will comforting Nate as well be like… cheating? Or in some other way, hurting Daniel?

Jack enters the apartment again and shuts the door and walks down the hall and opens the closet door. Nate is sitting in the little space on the floor with his knees pulled up to his chest so he would be compact enough to fit. He looks up at Jack and his eyes lose their dilation in the light, and he, with a nod from Jack, stands up and exits the closet.

Jack shuts the door and wonders what’s going through the angel’s mind but he doesn’t ask.

And here’s the problem.

Jack wants to go into the sitting room and curl up on the couch with his angel and fall asleep in front of the television and forget that Daniel is sad, and maybe actually accomplish something in his quest to design Steel Train merchandise, the selling of which will (hopefully) match Daniel’s income and account for Jack’s part of this deal, in that Jack will be in charge of the designing, production, and distribution of said shirts instead of their manager or their label, thereby saving the band money.

But does Jack’s taking a band thing and making it more profitable really equal the sacrifice Daniel is making by leaving the apartment to pursue an income?

And in the same way, does Jack’s “sharing” Nate with Daniel balance the fact that Jack is splitting his focus between Daniel and Nate? Or will Daniel always feel like he’s sacrificing more to allow Nate into his and Jack’s relationship than not to?

And ultimately - will Jack let go of Nate in order to make Daniel happy? (And more importantly, Jack thinks while Nate sits uncomfortably straight on the chair Jack had wordlessly pointed to instead of letting Nate sit next to him on the couch, would it even be  _possible_  to let go of Nate? At this point?)

Nate looks down at his hands and then up at the turned-off TV and then to Jack and then back to his hands, starting the cycle again.

“Nate,” says Jack, and Nate’s head snaps back towards Jack, his eyes sharp and focused on Jack, waiting, but still completely unreadable. Jack mulls over his words. “How are… what are you thinking?”

Nate says, “I’m trying not to.”

“Not to what?”

“Think.”

“Why?”

Nate doesn’t say anything to that. He looks down, though. He’s… when he’s thinking, which he clearly is, right now, now that Jack has suggested it… he’s easier to read. Jack can see the concern and the frustration. The struggle to put things into words. And then Nate gives up on that endeavor and decides not to answer at all, and instead to try not to look Jack in the eye.

“I want you to know that it’s going to be okay. With Daniel, I mean.” Jack says.

“What does 'okay’ mean?” Nate asks his own fingers.

“I wont let him hurt you, and I’m going to keep taking care of you and I won’t send you away.”

Nate doesn’t look up.

“Does that make you happy?”

Nate shrugs lopsidedly and starts to scratch at his knee - a habit he’s developed to fill empty silences and keep himself from saying anything stupid.

Jack pauses, then asks “What would make you happy?”

“What?” Nate responds.

“I want you to be happy, Nate, and that’s the only… the only way I can justify doing anything. I can’t do something that would make Daniel unhappy unless I know that it would make you happy, and I have to balance the two.”

Nate thinks very hard (it’s written all over his face). Then, “It doesn’t have to be a dichotomy.”

“Sometimes it does.”

“I want to touch.” (Nate goes very pale after saying that, as if he said it and then realized the consequences, that he’s… for the first time in months he’s asserted something about his self, a want statement. And maybe he said it because he wanted it so bad, and maybe he said it because Daniel is right and all he wants is Jack’s attention. He’s not sure. He’s worried that Daniel was right and that he’s very manipulative and that Jack is going to punish him for being evil or… or worse, that Jack won’t, and that Nate is going to have to deal with this guilt and this feeling of… worthlessness, himself.)

“You want to cuddle?” Jack kind of asks that, and smiles and laughs to himself in mild disbelief.

Nate just kind of looks at him - suddenly unreadable again, because his thoughts were going dark and so he shut them down and so now he’s just not thinking and vaguely anxious about it.

“Okay.” Jack says. “Come here.”

And Nate gets out of the uncomfortable chair and sits next to Jack where instructed, then shifts as close as possible to Jack of his own accord. And Jack wraps an arm around Nate’s (currently wingless) bony shoulders and a hand on Nate’s thigh as the angel pulls his feet and knees up to the couch and settles his head on Jack’s chest and then-

And then quickly decides that that’s uncomfortable and instead settles down again and rests his head in Jack’s lap, pulls his fingers close to his face and settles them loosely near the fabric of Jack’s sweatpants.

Jack is surprised. But he shouldn’t have been.

Because the fact is he’s been  _telling_  Daniel this…

Jack doesn’t think about Daniel and Nate in the same way because Nate is a dog. Or… he’s not… he’s a  _pet_ and he can’t be more than that because Jack, over time, made sure that Nate  _couldn’t_  be more than that.

So it’s a little bittersweet, as Jack, bewildered, begins to stroke Nate’s shoulder and torso where it’s curled against the back of the couch, and he sees and hears and feels the way that, in this position, Nate finally begins to relax, and the way that - he actually shivers contentedly as Jack runs his fingers through his hair.

Jack’s solved his problem and he feels a little sad having done so.

And then he himself relaxes as well, and realizes… he also feels loved.

…

**and i keep thinking that this is such a terrible mindframe for nate to be in: to be a loyal, loving… pet. and not much else. but then again, that’s a judgment according to human standards. angels, by design, are bound to end up like that in this sort of situation, right? and there can certainly be joy in it, just like a dog who loves his master. especially when his master is now trying to make him feel safe and happy. and hopefully, as nate feels more at home, he’ll learn how to want things and express his likes and dislikes and… to have a SELF, without waiting for his master to punish him.**

_…tbh I don’t think he’ll learn to have a /self/ unless…._

_Well, Nate cant have a /self/ unless someone teaches him to do so. And, as much as Jack thinks that he ought to feel guilty for turning Nate into this /dog/, he really… doesn’t. He /thinks/ he does, but he doesn’t, and that’s why we get things like him telling Nate to /hide in the closet for an hour/ so that Daniel won’t see him. Instead of, you know, sending him into the bathroom or to Daniel’s bedroom, or outside or something. That kind of command certainly doesn’t contribute to reducing Nate’s dissociation._

_But let me suggest this - the next time Jack leaves them alone together, and Daniel knows he shouldn’t hurt Nate and is very frustrated by that fact… well, they get to talking. And unlike Jack, Daniel, by thinking of Nate as a threat, also thinks of him as a /peer/. And so when Daniel talks to Nate, he expects a conversation, and as it becomes clear how uncomfortable Nate is talking, Daniel starts… encouraging him. To practice and learn and have his own opinions._

_Once Daniel gets over his anxieties about Jack, he finds Nate… endearing, and they become good friends because Daniel gets to /teach/ Nate something. And that makes Daniel happy because it means that Nate isn’t really perfect._

_And it just… they become genuine /friends/._

_Oh god and so Daniel inadvertently teaches Nate to have opinions and free will but then as Nate starts to regain autonomy, Jack feels threatened and needs to punish Nate for that autonomy._

_It’s a whole thing, and Daniel and Jack always end up on different sides._

…

**“Do you like that, Nate?” he mutters, and if Nate’s eyes weren’t shut tight he would see how Daniel’s eyes burn as he speaks. soft fingertips trace along the underside of the angel’s cock, drawing out a whimper. “Say what you want, or I’ll stop.”**

…

_and the best (worst?) part is that normally, when Daniel says something like that, he’s just goading his partner into shouting his name, or something dirty or… anything, it doesn’t matter, it’s hot._

_But with /Nate/, Nate actually /can’t/ say what he wants, he actually… it might be that he can’t form the words or it might be that he just can’t allow himself but…_

_Ultimately, Nate just whines and doesn’t actually say anything because he can’t and… disappointed, Daniel stops touching him, moves his fingers to Nate’s shoulder and keeps him from touching himself and /looks/ at Nate._

_And Nate struggles but then settles down, stares at Daniel and whines again, annoyed._

…

**“What’s my name, Nate?” Daniel asks, his hands gripping Nate’s thin shoulders but his voice soft.**

**“…it’s Daniel,” the angel responds matter-of-factly, furrowing his brows at the disjointed question.**

**Daniel nods, pleased. “That’s right.” His fingers relax and travel down Nate’s arms, tickling where they meet bare skin, until they settle on his wrists and grasp there, more loosely this time. “Can you say my name?”**

**“Yes,” Nate says earnestly. Daniel stares at him. “Daniel,” Nate repeats, obeying the silent command.**

**At that, Daniel smiles, and he begins working his way further down Nate’s body, seeking out the places that make Nate shiver. When he reaches Nate’s thighs he lingers there, scratches against the hair and teases circles into the soft skin on the insides, careful not to brush against Nate’s straining hardness. but eventually his knuckles grazes over Nate’s sensitive balls, and Nate lets out a gasp before quickly biting down on his lip. “Is that what you like?” asks Daniel, teasing, but his eyes are dark. he cups Nate’s balls in his hand and then holds them still. “Is that what you want?”**

**Nate’s face burns red as he looks off to the side, silent.**

**Daniel continues: “You know what to do.” He slides his palm further underneath Nate, painfully slow, until he’s caressing between Nate’s asscheeks, and Nate’s shuddering and clutching the sheets, and Daniel orders him, with finality, “Tell me what you want.”**

**Nate’s response is almost too quiet to hear:**

**“Daniel.”**

**And that’s a wonderful start.**

…

The next time Jack leaves them alone for awhile is the following weekend when he goes down to South Jersey to meet with a merch company, and he’s not gonna come back ‘til the morning.

Before he leaves, he kisses Daniel. Then he looks Nate in the eye while stroking down the back of his head, fingers threading through the angel’s hair, and he asks Nate, very quietly, “You’re gonna be good while I’m gone?”

And Nate nods wordlessly, eyes wide and full of idolization, and then Jack leaves.

When the door shuts, Nate stands there in front of it for a moment. Daniel goes back to the couch and turns on the television for some white noise, and Nate, aimlessly, with no command from Daniel, wanders into Jack’s room and lies down on his side on the bed. Which is still warm, because of the sunbeams coming through the bedroom window, and still smells like Jack. It’s kind of like kicking himself in the heart for no reason. He tries to sleep.

And then he stays there for an hour and a half. Daniel is a little unsettled by this, but he doesn’t think too hard about it, he just figures Nate must’ve been… tired or something. But when the hour and a half mark passes, Daniel calls to Nate that he’s going to Chipotle or something and he doesn’t get a response. So he decides to check on Nate, and so he goes into Jack’s bedroom and finds Nate with his wings manifested, and stretched over the sides of the bed as he lies on his stomach with his face under the pillow.

“Nate,” Daniel says, unsure, “do you want me to get you something to eat?”

But Nate seems to be asleep, so Daniel, shrugging to himself, leaves.

It’s three hours and a successful trip into the instrument shop before Daniel returns home, and Nate is still sleeping. And Daniel is a little peeved now, as if he’s not interesting enough for Nate to be…  _on_ , for, like he is for Jack.

So, annoyed, Daniel leaves Nate to whatever he’s dreaming of, and stays in the sitting room, where he fiddles with his old acoustic guitar, restrings it.

And so Nate spends the whole day in Jack’s bed. Its ten to nine when he finally comes out of there (Daniel is a bit alarmed, but… flattered, that Nate came to and decided to come to finally say hello to Daniel.)

And so Daniel is about to sing good morning to the apparently lethargic angel when he sees that Nate has been crying. That his eyes and eyelids and nose are pink and that his hair is awry and that the bottom tips of his wings, folded close to his body, are dragging on the floor.

And Daniel unleashes a series of questions, still  _platonic_ (because it feels like, to Daniel, the way he treats Nate depends on the day of the week), but concerned. And then he realizes (as Nate shrinks from the noises, curls further into himself and wanders towards his seat at the table where his takeout dinner, now lukewarm, is waiting) that Nate isn’t going to  _answer_  any of Daniel’s questions, and it’s foolish to even ask.

But Daniel sits down across from Nate, and proceeds to ask anyway. “What’s wrong?” he repeats, and Nate doesn’t say anything, but then the question hangs in the air and Nate pauses in the process of prying open the plastic container - it’s Chinese food, tonight - and he looks up at Daniel and frowns.

And Daniel watches him, holds his eye contact, and waits for an answer.

A couple minutes pass. And in the silence, those minutes are very  _very_  long, and Nate is getting more uncomfortable, and more anxious, and more hungry. But he doesn’t move.

And Daniel waits.

Finally, Nate says, very quietly, “I was crying.”

Immediately, Daniel demands him to elaborate, saying “I know. But why? What’s wrong?” as if the long break before Nate spoke hadn’t been so long at all.

Nate feels rushed and he puts his hands in his lap and starts scratching at his knees and looking away and… it’s only a full minute, this time, before he mumbles, “…ignored.”

“What?”

A little louder, a little more uncontrolled, Nate says “I felt  _ignored._ ”

“You felt like I was ignoring you?”

Nats shakes his head no, towards the food, very urgently.

“Jack, then? You felt like Jack was ignoring you?”

No, again, except this time he’s looking at Daniel and his eyes seem frightened. “No.” he says, to emphasize.

“Who else could you… feel ignored by, Nate? We’re the only two people-”

“I know.”

And then Daniel knows. And he doesn’t feel… sad, or anything, about it. But he’s intrigued, at how hard it is for Nate to just say it.

“You won’t hurt my feelings, Nate. It’s okay to say you felt like I wasn’t paying enough attention to you.”

Nate’s still shaking his head no, but at the food again. He won’t look at Daniel.

“Just say it.”

Nate shuts his eyes in frustration and shakes his head some more.

“Nate, I just want you to tell me. Just say it, it’s fine.”

“No, it’s  _not!_ ” Nate shouts.

It’s the first time he’s shouted like that in about six months, since he was kept in Jack’s… the….

“It’s  _not_ okay!” He shouts again, distressed. He stands up. “It’s  _not okay!_ ” He doesn’t have any more words to say. He stomps on the floor. “It’s not!”

Daniel, still seated, hesitates, and then asks “Why not?”

Nate screams inarticulately, and tugs on his own hair with both hands and white knuckles, and he turns away from Daniel, and that scream turns into a sob and he falls to his knees, jostling his chair with his wings and curling over himself.

And now he’s sobbing, audibly, something Daniel has  _never_  seen him do before, and Daniel gets up out of his chair and comes to where Nate is kneeling on the floor, wraps his arms around him.

Daniel holds him and Nate cries into Daniel’s neck and his whole body is shaking, and Daniel’s fingers have settled around Nate’s wings and are stroking them, curled up around Nate’s back.

Daniel coos at him and tells him it’s okay, it’s okay, and that Nate was good and that it was good to try to answer Daniel and it was okay and,  _most importantly_ , Daniel says “I’ll make sure to pay more attention to you, in the future, and I’m sorry for making you cry.”

“No.” Nate sobs into Daniel’s neck, shaking his head slightly.

“Stop talking.”

(And, of course, Nate takes that as an order, and tenses up and doesn’t say anything beyond the whimpers he can’t help let out, and Daniel wonders if this is one step forwards, two steps back.)

…

_And I had this idea that angels feel emotional/physical pain when they hear lies and blasphemy? And so Jack will make claims and call him worthless, meaningless, evil, disgusting… and he has reasons for saying those things which make logical sense? And so when Jack started saying these things at the beginning, Nate was kind of… struck by it? The lies only compounded the physical pain, and he would be hurt by them just as much as by the ropes keeping him in place and the knives that Jack uses on him. And they were /lies/ and it’s just really bad and so… Nate /has/ to make it stop he /needs/ to make the pain stop and it gets so bad that he starts to adapt. And he starts to believe Jack. And in taking Jack’s statements as objective truth, he no longer feels the sharp pain of sin, and he just kind of… the way that the pain goes away only proves to him that Jack was right all along, that the lack of pain is the proof that he is now acting the way God wanted him to…._

_But the other part is that, as the pain reduces, Nate becomes more susceptible to it. He /feels/ it more and he /hates/ it more when Jack hurts him physically and so he starts to give in, and that’s just… how it happens._

_But so… it’s not necessarily right or wrong, this whole angels-as-slaves thing, because it makes Biblical sense in that the humans were the more perfect species. But it definitely makes sense to Nate because, in a way, his human personality /was/ artificial. And so now that Jack has killed Nate’s human personality, all that’s left is his angelic soul, and that part of him /does/ love and idolize Jack. And so does that mean Jack was right?_

_But my main problem is Jack and why he does all of this. And how he would go about doing it - whether it would be super violent, or really Stockholm syndrome-y in that he spends a lot of time telling Nate that he cares about him and that if only Nate would just do what he’s supposed to…, or if he’d actually be pretty normal and sweet to Nate except when he has to hurt him and he doesn’t like hurting him._

_And if the punishments themselves are really violent or if they’re more lectures and mean, or if they’re humiliation or if they’re just isolation or what?_

**i think in Jack’s mind, brute violence is the most direct and effective way to mold Nate the way he wants. it’s also the way he feels most capable of; he doesn’t trust his own intelligence enough to try to emotionally blackmail an angel. which means that when he alternates between beating Nate and taking care of him, it’s not calculated to foster stockholm syndrome. he really does WANT to nurture Nate, and he tries all the time: he brings him treats and strokes his hair and tells him he’s being good (even if he’s not), and if Nate keeps rebelling after all that… then Jack gets frustrated and lashes out. violently. and he humiliates Nate: he smacks him across the face and spits on him and leaves him strung up naked with words like “disobedient” and “failure” ringing in his ears. and here again, it’s not necessarily intentional, but rather something that comes about naturally because Jack doesn’t appreciate being rejected. when it comes down to it, Jack doesn’t know what he’s doing, and he’s just as emotionally torn as Nate. he just happens to have the upper hand, physically, and that’s why he wins.**

_/god/ okay okay so another question - Nate has angelic powers beyond his own body, like he can clean up the blood that spills on the carpet and… well, does he have angelic powers beyond his body? Or is his blood still his body?_

_Basically how does Jack prevent Nate from getting free?_

_Oh and also where does all of this take place? A basement somewhere? A motel? Where won’t they be heard?_

**maybe it’s a more limited power, like regeneration? so he can heal himself and stick to his predetermined death, but beyond that, he has the same physical form and powers as one would expect from a human with his, uh, specifications? as for the place… maybe Jack and Daniel have a vacation home on the jersey shore that they’ve been renting forever, for partying and getaways and whatnot, complete with a soundproof basement**

_Mmm yeah but would that be expensive? I mean… well, yeah, it’d be expensive, duh, but Jack has money I guess. Maybe his parents own the place and normally rent it out but he asked if he could live there for awhile and so they let him stay there cheap. But then what about making Nate disappear from /his/ part of the universe?_

_…gosh that’s pretty interesting though, I just…. can’t stop thinking about Jack having to go home because of some kind of inescapable reason and it’s immediate? And he can’t bring Nate because Nate will try to get away. So he has to… he ends up leaving him there, all tied up and lonely. It couldn’t be helped, because Jack had to drive straight home which is only 45 min away and he didn’t have time to come home and so Nate is stuck for three days, just /stuck/ and alone and there’s no way for him to know when Jack will come back or to keep track of time or to eat or sleep or anything and… like, he’s not gonna die and he’s not gonna need to go to the bathroom or anything; he can help that much. But it doesn’t mean he won’t be hungry and thirsty and exhausted and /lonely/ and…_

_And when Jack finally returns, rushes down into the basement, not sure of what he’s going to find, there, Nate looks /awful/, and he starts to… beg._

_He starts to beg because he thinks that was a punishment, that this is the new normal, and that Jack will leave him for /longer/ next time and he can’t /deal/ with that, he can’t handle that concept and he starts to beg Jack to never leave again, that he’ll do /anything/ and…_

_So that’s a turning point because - and it was unintentional… Jack hadn’t meant to hurt Nate like this - that’s when Nate finally breaks._

_Jack kisses him and takes him down off the wall and - instead of apologizing - Jack says Nate was /good/, and comforts him and just /holds/ him, and that’s when things start to really change. That’s when Nate starts to really change._

…

He follows orders from God to the letter, but he doesn’t necessarily lack free will so much as lack a need to  _express_ that free will. And when angels like Nate take a vessel, they live on the earth as that vessel for the vessel’s entire life, and the vessel wouldn’t exist without Nate - he’s not human. And neither is his body. And it never was. This entire life - his parents, his potential future children, and everything in between his birth and death is entirely his and would not exist without him. He’s not taking another soul’s spot. He’s just made a new one for himself.

So he’s an angel by species, and, to an extent, by angelic society. But not by post or purpose. He’s not a soldier, he doesn’t have some sort of angelic duty. He’s just… an angel. And that means different things depending on the situation but right now he’s an angel on terra firma and nothing more, nothing less.

He was living as a moderately successful human singer, and he delighted in music and the sharing of that music with humans. As much as Nate is omniscient when it comes to matters of metaphysics and concepts beyond human grasp, he’s on the same footing as humans when it comes to creating things, new things, like music. And that makes music  _magic_ , to Nate, and he loves that. Not in the lofty, intellectual sense of the word “love”, but in a very active, emotional sense. Listening to and composing music makes Nate  _stupidly happy._ He even admits, when asked by his then friend Jack, that the reason he loves music so much is because it makes him feel closer to God.

But Jack became curious about Nate’s mannerisms and beliefs (theologically and philosophically) after that, and eventually hypothesized - and was correct - that Nate was an angel.

Upon that realization, he conspired to prove this theory, and then succeeded to. It was a rather violent event, and if Jack’s hypothesis had been incorrect, Nate might’ve been dead.

And so Jack, knowing for sure that Nate is an angel, comes up with a series of lies to remove Nate’s bandmates’ and friends’ concerns, and then locks Nate away from the world in a basement with no windows, overkill restraints preventing any possibility of the angel’s escape, for about three months.

Whenever Nate tries to escape, he is beaten.

Whenever Nate tries to withhold information about himself or the angels in general, he is beaten.

Whenever Nate challenges Jack’s purported infallibility, he is beaten.

Whenever Nate tries to hurt Jack, he is beaten.

And, over time, Jack adjusts his methods to account for Nate  _learning_. So then Jack explains, when he beats the angel, that it’s Nate’s fault. That the only reason that Jack is forced to beat Nate is because Nate is acting  _bad,_ and if he were only  _good_ , then he wouldn’t be hurt; he would be rewarded.

And, over time, Nate has changed. He tells Daniel, after hours and hours of the man  _prodding_ him, he tells Daniel, because Daniel has an arm around Nate’s shoulders, because Daniel’s fingers are in his hair, and Daniel’s voice is quiet and sweet as he whispers reassurances interspersed with… with  _commands_. He tells Daniel, as loudly as he can manage (which isn’t very loud at all), “I spent a lot of time staring at empty walls.”

“Mmm.” Daniel responds, affirming nothing substantial, just providing that he’s here, and listening.

“That’s the worst part - or - there are a lot of worst parts. But that was really bad.”

“Why?”

“I… I was born… I was born into this body to be creative, but I spent weeks just staring at empty walls. It was-” his lower lip trembles “-exhausting.”

“You couldn’t escape? You couldn’t… make the walls do things without, you know, touching them?”

He pauses for a few moments, then says, with a little bit of a smile, “I’m not telekinetic, Daniel. Angels aren’t telekinetic.”

“But you could clean the blood off the carpet.”

“Because it’s a part of my life force. I can keep myself alive. I can manipulate parts of myself.”

“But not the walls.” says Daniel.

“Yes.” says Nate. And he pauses and he doesn’t say anything for a very long time.

Daniel asks, squeezing Nate’s arm, “we’ll take a break?”

“Okay.” (because Nate can’t say he  _wants_ to take a break, he can only take that break.)

So they take a break. That’s the thing about Daniel; he’s very aware of Nate’s comfort zone, and ways to work with that. Around that. Nate thinks that Daniel is probably having these conversations with Nate because he thinks it will somehow benefit Nate. Or perhaps Daniel just wants to know more, not for Nate’s sake in speaking about it, but more for this thirst for understanding, the same natural desire for objective metaphysical truths that had manifested in Jack and resulted in this whole situation. Nate can’t know that, he can only answer truthfully what Daniel demands from him. And it is a demand.

“You said there were other worst parts. What else?”

 _I don’t want to talk about it._ But that’s a want statement. “Okay.” says Nate, and then, thoughtfully, “the lies.”

“The… lies?”

“It’s part of being an angel, that to witness or take part in sin physically pains us. And so… lies, blasphemy. To hear them… hurts.”

“What lies?”

“Well… well, they weren’t lies. But I thought they were lies. I thought… he told me I was evil and that my existence was meaningless and that I was disgusting and born to serve humanity.”

Daniel’s lips pull tight but he doesn’t grimace nor smile. “Oh.”

“And I thought they were lies and so it hurt a lot. But they weren’t lies. I learned they weren’t lies and then it stopped hurting to hear them.”

“What makes them true?”

 _I don’t want to talk about it._ “I… I’m evil because power corrupts, and… and I don’t remember precisely. My existence doesn’t mean anything because I decided my own conception and my own death and in making those decisions I’ve reduced the significance of my life. I’m… I disgust people because I manipulated humans into loving me and caring about me without  _earning_ my place. And I… I was born to serve humans.” It’s the last part that Nate says with certainty. For the first time it doesn’t sound like he’s recounting a story, it sounds like this is something he genuinely believes.

“How do you know that?” asks Daniel.

“Because… well, it’s simple, really. I was born into this particular life with an artificial personality contrived from a desire to fit in with humanity. But Jack killed that artificiality, and now, see what I’m left as?” Nate gestures to himself vaguely. Daniel takes note of the way Nate’s arms and torso are dwarfed by his t-shirt, the emaciated look of his arms, as if that’s the answer. Nate shuts his eyes and rests his head in the curve of Daniel’s shoulder. “I know my place. I see the magic in humanity. I know I could never be like you.”

“Do you want to be human?”

Nate doesn’t answer. It’s a want question and Daniel knows that, and so Nate knows he won’t offend Daniel by keeping his eyes and mouth shut.

“Because,” Daniel grins, “I’ll start calling you Pinnochio if you do.”

Nate smiles slightly, and out of that smile, in a bit of a rush, comes “I didn’t know for sure until… I think it was January.” Jack brought Nate to Daniel in February, so it was probably January. “He left me.”

“He left you?”

“He left me in the room.” Nate says, ambiguously.

“The room.” Daniel repeats, unsure.

“My room. He left me. And I… I didn’t know if he was going to come back. I didn’t know if I was going to be stuck there for however long. Until someone found me? And how long would that be? I would go crazy.” Nate is talking too fast and his shut eyes are scrunched tight.

“He left you…? How did he…?”

“I was tied to the wall and he left me.” A sense of betrayal, perhaps, in his voice.

“Why?”

“I… don’t know. I think I was bad.” As if it hurts, he’s shutting his eyes tight and curling his body into Daniel’s even more. “I shouldn’t have been bad.”

“That’s frightening.”

“Yeah.”

“Were you afraid, Nate?”

 _I don’t want to talk about it._ “I don’t know. I should’ve been good.”

“But were you afraid?”

“I don’t know.”

“Were you or weren’t you?”

Nate’s jaw clenches and his throat is closing up and he says “I’m not sure, is the problem. I think I was afraid but thinking back on it I’m not so sure. I shouldn’t have been afraid because he was going to come back and get me. And I knew that. I think. I think that was the time when my perspective changed.”

“How did your perspective change?”

“Because before that, I was thinking like Nate. And after that I was thinking like an angel.”

“And so now you feel subservient.”

“Yes. And I also don’t get scared.”

“Not at all?”

“No.”

“Not even a little bit? Not even… not even before, when I hurt you?” The simplistic, infantile sentence structures that they’re using are making Daniel lightheaded and delirious with infatuation and fascination. He hopes that’s not a part of him that Nate is picking up on intuitively, but it might be, and if so, Daniel’s not even sure that it would be a bad thing. There’s definitely a part of him that wants Nate to be afraid. There’s also a part of him that wants to make sure Nate is never afraid or unhappy ever again. Those are two different parts.

Nate looks at Daniel’s hands thoughtfully, still leaning against the man’s body, their warmth mixing here on the couch. “Maybe. A little bit.”

“A little scared?”

“A little bit.”

“What’s better? For you, I mean, is it better to have angel traits or human traits?”

“Jack likes me more when I am more angel.”

“Do you know how I like you?” Daniel asks, playfully.

“No.”

“I like you just the way you are.”

“Are you being sarcastic?”

“Maybe.” Daniel kisses the top of Nate’s head and unmutes the television.

…

Jack and Daniel have sex in Jack’s bedroom, and they leave the door open.

And Nate doesn’t know what to do with himself. He actually sits right by the doorway cross-legged with his wings folded in, and watches them have sex, and they don’t even notice, or, if they do, they don’t care. He sits there and he watches Jack kiss - worship - down Daniel’s shoulder to his chest and his stomach down towards the inside of his hip. And then how he takes Daniel’s cock into his mouth, and…

… the way Daniel’s back arches against the pillows and his head and neck and shoulders end up pressed against the wall as he moans and twists his body and  _feels,_  his eyes shut tight…

Nate frowns as he watches them and scratches thoughtfully at the waistband of his too-big sweatpants and wonders if it’s really a… if it’s really a sin to touch himself like this. Especially out of jealousy. He wonders how far he’s fallen from grace and he wonders if he still cares and…eventually he decides he doesn’t.

He leans sideways against the hallway wall and his fingers make their way down into his pants and his eyes stare unblinking at Daniel in the other room, through the open doorway…

and eventually he just

he can’t

he shuts his eyes and he focuses on the sensations of his own fingers and that’s when Daniel  _stops_ and  _notices_ , whispers Jack’s name urgently and taps his shoulder to get him to stop licking and start looking. Daniel is fascinated, horny, and charmed.

“Autonomy.” Daniel says - even a little proud? in a very sick way - he wants to get this on film - “He’s gonna make himself lose it.”

“He’s - Daniel, do you see that? He’s touching the tip of his-”

“Wing. Yeah. Well, you know. maybe it’s like nipples.”

“That’s gross.”

Daniel pinches Jack’s nipple and giggles, and Jack seems a bit too distracted to laugh, but Daniel likes how Jack shivers.

Then Jack observes, “He’s gonna come.”

(Nate’s breathing too fast, almost drooling against the drywall with his eyes shut and his breathing too fast and his fingers hidden behind fabric as they work familiarly over his remarkably human body)

Daniel grins and nods his agreement.

Abruptly, Jack stands up, off the bed, still naked, and his eyes are empty and Daniel doesn’t understand and… he walks through the open doorway and says “Nate,” a little too loud.

And Nate flinches and his fingers stop moving and he takes his hand out of his pants, but his eyes are still dazed and his cock is tenting the fabric and he doesn’t look up at Jack. And Jack is angry.

“What are you doing, Nate?”

“I don’t-“ Nate’s voice is high and heavy with need.

"That’s not what I told you to do, Nate, is it?”

“I just-”

“I told you to clean the kitchen”

“It’s clean!”

“And, then, what did I say?”

“Jack…”

“I told you to stay on the couch. I told you to stay on the couch and not bother anything and not look.”

“I’m sorry, I thought-”

“You  _thought?_ You thought  _what,_ that I was  _joking?_ ”

“I was distracted.”

“And so you decided to watch us, and touch yourself.”

“I was-”

“ _Disgusting_.”

Nate is very distraught, and Daniel is shocked that Jack would be upset about this. Daniel thought it was hot. Daniel thought it was really hot and he knows that Jack did too, there’s no hiding that, Daniel saw the way his eyes dilated and he got so hard…

And Nate is  _distraught_  and he’s on his hands and knees crying for Jack to forgive him.

And Jack grabs him by the  _hair_  and drags him into what used to be Daniel’s room, and, sitting there in Jack’s bed, naked and no longer aroused, Daniel can hear through the walls every hit… every slap… every scream. The horrified shouting for mercy, and Jack telling Nate that if Nate values his own  _pleasure_ over his orders? that Jack will make sure he will never feel pleasure again.

Daniel shivers and pulls the covers over himself and tries not to think too hard about it.

…

**i just… that’s so /disobedient/. how strong is his desire that he’s willing to risk getting beaten into submission just to get off on watching his masters making love**

_it’s so disobedient because…_

_he cares more about them than he does himself_

_he cares more about jack than he does jacks orders_

_or at least, in that moment he does_

_after weeks of spending time with daniel and daniel’s reassurances that things aren’t so black and white as he thinks they are_

_his desire to be with them in this moment in some way is so strong that he just does_

_he can’t rationalize why - it doesn’t make sense_

_and he’s seen them have sex before; it’s not as if it’s new or anything_

_but_

_something’s changed._

_or at least… something’s temporarily changed._

_jack is going to fix that._

…

They’re like… they’re like two stars, hurtling towards each other. They pass each other too quickly, at first, but then their gravitational forces get caught on each other, and so they hurtle towards each other again, and past, and then backwards and then again, so on and so on, conflict after conflict, each infinity symbol of movement drawing them closer and closer together until one day they collide and become a black hole.

It’s inevitable that eventually this relationship will consume them so fully that it will destroy them, and the inevitability of that concept is almost a comfort, because it means that each moment holds significance, and… the fear of insignificance is what hurts them each – Jack and Daniel and Nate – in their cores. So… the fact that it can’t last forever gnaws on Jack’s mind almost incessantly, but at least he’s not worrying that it won’t  _matter,_ because it does matter, and that’s just a fact.

The force with which he shoves the kitchen knife - he doesn’t even remember when he  _got_ the knife - into the mass of Nate’s left wing near the shoulder is unprecedented, and awful, and the horrified wail that follows is what makes Jack just press in harder, and the blood starts flowing, and he needs to know that Nate is still  _his._

But he can’t be sure anymore. Nate’s teeth grit hard and his eyes are unfocused and unbelieving, and his fingers grapple with the knife embedded in his skin.

He can’t help it (and that’s the scariest part, is that, suddenly, Nate can’t help but be  _disobedient._ Something has changed), and he lets out a “ _Fuck_ you…” high pitched under his breath.

Jack twists the knife and demands aloud that Nate take his hands off Jack’s arm, and that he stop screaming. Nate screams. Jack twists the knife.

It’s inevitable, really.

“Jack, you have to stop.” That’s Daniel, standing in the doorway, hastily dressed in only a pair of standard black boxershorts and his arms crossed over his chest. His eyes are focused on Jack because he’s afraid that if he looks at Nate, he’ll see where the knife goes through one side of the wing and sticks out on the other side. Daniel doesn’t want to see that. He also doesn’t want to see Nate’s face. “You have to stop.” he repeats, because he doesn’t exactly know what to say beyond that.

Jack’s eyes are wide, but lucid. “You saw what he did.”

Daniel nods. Nate’s knees buckle, and the point of the knife drags against the drywall as he sinks, slicing the paint.

“He needs to learn.” Jack says.

“What does he need to learn, Jack? He’s already in love with you, what more do you  _fucking_ need?”

“He needs to learn his place.”

“He knows, Jack. He knows.”

“But-”

Daniel enters the room. He sits on the foot of his bed, and Jack looks at him, and then at Nate shrieking noiselessly from the pain with his face all but pressed into the carpet. Jack lets go of his grip on Nate’s shoulder where the wing attaches, where the injury is, and the blood in that moment disappears from his fingers, and he goes to join Daniel at the foot of the bed, all shook up, watching the angel’s agony from a safe distance. It’s not the first time that they’ve sat together watching Nate heal himself, but the other two times were… were so different, and it was Daniel’s fault and… now, Jack’s soul is in turmoil, and his legs twitch restlessly as he sits and watches.

Daniel watches Jack. “He already knows, Jack.” he says, again, more quietly. It’s lost its meaning the second time around, but it’s better to fill the silence than to leave it empty with Nate’s uneven breathing.

Daniel never hurt Nate’s wings. That’s something that lies squarely on Jack’s shoulders. And as the seconds go by, and Nate shivers and sobs quietly into the empty safety of his own trembling left-hand fingers as his right hand blindly seeks out the handle of the knife still protruding from the wound, Jack realizes that, unlike the body that is Nate, his wings… might not be the same thing. The same material.

Jack didn’t hurt the illusion, Jack hurt Nate’s  _essence._

His stomach sinks, and he grabs Daniel’s hand, and Daniel doesn’t object, and Jack doesn’t loosen his hold on Daniel’s fingers until Nate, with a sharp gasp, yanks the knife out of his own wound, and Jack sees, ever so slowly, the ripped skin start to mend itself, the feathers start to right themselves, and Nate’s twisted grimace of anguish slowly transform into a tense, hollow stare at the floor, tears still hanging in the corners of his eyes. Jack hadn’t been sure if Nate would be able to heal his own wings. The truth is, he hadn’t even thought about what the wings really  _were_ , what they  _meant,_ until this moment.

(The wings are physical manifestations of Nate’s divinity.)

Minutes pass and minutes pass, and Daniel starts to think about what he ought to say, when it might be appropriate to start to speak again, start to begin the transfer out of this moment of horror back into the function of their lives. But before Daniel gets the chance to choose his words, Nate mumbles audibly - of his own accord -

something along the lines of, “I want to die.”

It’s the first time Jack has heard that, the third time for Daniel. Jack grips Daniel’s hand again.

“I’m sorry.” Jack says, disheveled and haunted.

Nate doesn’t refuse the apology. He doesn’t say anything at all.

…

Fifteen minutes later, Nate passes out on the carpet in Daniel’s room. When Daniel confirms, with a forced composure, that no, Nate did not just  _die,_ he’s still breathing fine and he finished healing in record time so he’s probably a little wiped out, Jack goes into the kitchen at Daniel’s suggestion and puts a frozen pizza in the oven. He’s still carrying that lost, haunted look on his face. Daniel thinks that Jack is being a little selfish, getting all emotional like this. Daniel thinks that Jack doesn’t have the  _right_ to be so emotional about a situation that he himself caused.

Daniel gets a glass and fills it three-quarters with ice, and then water, and grabs the paper towel roll before returning with both items to his room, to work at reviving Nate. The angel comes to, again, without much fuss, after Daniel wets his face with the frigid washcloth, and he also carries the haunted look of Jack. Or… or maybe there’s something different about Nate though, Daniel thinks. When Nate sits up (and winces visibly, on the way, his wings disappeared into the ether and the sore spots on his back all that remain of the wound), Daniel sees that Nate’s eyes are different. Still him, but more lucid.

The lucidity makes Daniel feel a little bit warm.

Nate sits there, exhausted, for a moment, before falling over wordlessly against Daniel, who catches his shoulders and holds him and listens to him whisper things.

“I know you’re scared,” Daniel says, in response, “but he’s not going to hurt you. Not again.” and in a few moments, “I mean it, this time, he won’t. I won’t let him.” and then, “Nate, it’s all going to be okay, nothing has changed.”

“Yes it has.” (that’s something that Nate says a little louder, above the hollow whisper that only Daniel is able to hear.)

“Okay,” Daniel sighs, confirms, rubs fingers through Nate’s hair, “it has. But it won’t be like that again.”

“It hurt.”

“I know it hurt. But… but you healed yourself faster than usual, right? So it wasn’t  _that_ bad…”

“I rushed to heal myself because I was scared.”

Daniel’s eyes widen with realization, “and so you passed out.”

“Yeah.” (Nate’s responses are significantly quicker than usual. It’s the lucidity. It’s as if Daniel is talking to an entirely different person.)

Daniel doesn’t say anything, he just continues rubbing down Nate’s hair and neck and the high parts of his shoulders, avoiding the bruises on the left one.

“I want to die.” Nate chokes out.

“What does that mean, Nate? Do you want to stop being Nate and go back to Heaven, or do you mean you want to stop… existing, entirely?”

Nate says, “I- I’m…” and then he pauses, and chooses his words, and he says, “I’m ashamed. I feel ashamed for letting Jack hurt me.”

“You’re not sure which you mean.”

“Yeah.”

“But why? Why are you suddenly so upset.”

And Nate’s eyes fill with tears, and he says, with no language hesitation but his own emotions, “Because my name is Nate… and my family is from Iowa…. and I like to sing… and Jack took all of that away from me.”

“But you’re an angel.” Daniel says, and puts his chin against Nate’s left shoulder and breathes.

He shakes his head no, and whispers, “But I was so much more…”

…

Jack burns the pizza.

…

That night, Nate sleeps in Daniel’s bed, Daniel sleeps in Jack’s bed, and Jack doesn’t sleep, wandering around between rooms thoughtfully until three in the morning when Daniel wakes up and demands Jack “at least close his eyes.”

Five hours later, Jack enters Daniel’s room, and sits at the foot of the bed, and Nate wakes up but doesn’t open his eyes.

“Open your eyes.” Jack says.

A tense pause.

It rained last night.

“Nate,” Jack says, “please… please open your eyes… please just look at me.”

Nate’s eyes open slowly, and remain hazy and unfocused. He doesn’t say anything. The covers are bunched up around his neck but he doesn’t seem to mind.

Jack just stares, for a moment, at his angel. Then he asks, “What do you want to do?”

Nate looks at him. His voice is scratchy. “What do I want to do?”

“Do you want to leave?” Jack asks.

“What?”

“Please don’t leave.”

“How could I leave?” Nate asks.

And then they just look at each other. And they’ve never been able to just look at each other like this, they’ve never had the opportunity to really see the other for what they truly are. At the beginning, they sized each other up, and in the middle, they played caricatures of themselves. Or something like that. It felt real. But this is the end, and it feels real, too.

“If I stay, will you take care of me?”

“Yes, of course.” Jack’s combination solemnity and eagerness spills over the edges.

“No, I mean… I don’t mean like before. I mean… I need… I don’t have any money. And I don’t have anywhere to go. And I can’t…live… like a normal person.”

“All of that.” Jack says, “I’ll do anything. Everything. I’ll take care of you. I’ll teach you guitar.”

Nate laughs, once. He curls over onto his side facing where Jack is sitting by his knees, and he says “okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay.” Nate repeats.

There are other things that Nate is still going to need. He’s still going to need touch. He’s still going to need reassurances that he is… that he is being good, and that’s something Daniel will do, that’s… he trusts Daniel.

And maybe he’ll learn to trust Jack again, too. Maybe things will change.

Jack says, “Okay. Okay. I’ll make it good, okay? I’ll make it good for you. I’ll…  _God,_ Nate, I can’t live without you.”

Nate says “I can’t live.”

…

_Amy left to go take a shower, so it’s me finishing this fic in order to share it with all of you. It’s me reflecting on what I’ve written, and what we’ve talked about, and all that’s happened as a result of it._

_I know how their lives are going to continue from this point, even though it hurts them right now to experience it._

_I know that Nate is going to recover, but that his recovery will lean more towards his angel side than to his original human persona. I know that there’s something about his angel traits that he likes, that he cares more about than his human traits, and I know that that /thing/ that makes him proud to be an angel is the fact that it means he is pure. Or, at least, that he is meant to be pure, that he was once pure. He doesn’t necessarily want to be pure, but he wants to know that in his pure origins, there is good, that he came out of good. He wants to know that he’s not inherently evil and the fact that he’s an angel definitely helps with that._

_I know that Daniel is going to be Nate’s primary emotional caretaker. And that is weird, because it was also Daniel who was very violent at the beginning. But Daniel was violent because he felt like Nate was an adversary for Jack’s affections. Daniel, from the start, always thought of Nate as an equal. He still does. And so Nate cares more for Daniel and, when he needs it (and he often does), seeks help from Daniel._

_I know that Jack is going to be okay. I know that his and Nate’s relationship will heal… sort of… as Nate returns into his protective emotionless shell and becomes more angel again, and as Jack gives up more and more of his need for control._

_But I also know that Jack and Daniel both abused Nate._

_I don’t know where that will leave them._

_I know that here is how it ends-_

_I know that, in order to pleasure Nate, Jack and Daniel go along the primate route, instead of the sexual. They spend a couple of hours cooing at Nate while combing through his feathers with their fingers, straightening things out and picking out any broken feathers or loose material, brushing out the down. I know that this is the only thing, that these gentle touches to his wings to his /wings/ are the only things that will make Nate trust them again, fall in love with them again. And so they do this, and it’s great because Nate can’t do this himself, he’s not like a bird and his being clean and happy requires help from other people and it’s a romantic concept? But in /practice/…_

_Nate melts. It’s like he sinks into it so naturally and, unlike other praises or other things that they used to do for him, he loses pretense this time. His head tilts back and he shuts his eyes and he’s /gone/, totally relaxed and content._

_Jack and Daniel talk while they work. This drowsy happiness covers everything, softens the roughest edges. It’s the best outcome possible._

_I know that it’s not simple, and I know that it wouldn’t last forever. I don’t know how long Nate has left to live, anyway, and I certainly don’t know how the other two would react if one of them – any one of them – were to pass away._

_But it’s complicated, and it’s love, and it’s hate and it’s confusion and it’s frustration and it’s need all rolled up into one._

_And I think, even if it doesn’t have a life of it’s own, this story – not necessarily in writing but conceptually – has /life/._

**Author's Note:**

> tell me what you think?


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